One of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex has been hacked, losing as many as 120 000 Bitcoin units with a value of about $65-million.
The incident caused the Bitcoin digital currency to slump.
On discovering the security breach, Bitfinex halted all trading, as well as halting all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from the exchange.
“We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen,” it stated when the breach was discovered on Tuesday. “We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.
By yesterday (3 August), Bitfinex was in an ongoing process of restoring limited functionality in a secure environment, with full functionality due to come on afterwards in progressive stages.
To accommodate the relaunch, all withdrawals, open orders, and open funding offers have been canceled.
Bitcoin slumps on massive theft
